It's all small stuff.

Tag Archives: walking

And if you showed up at my door on Saturday morning, I’d probably boot you right back out the door again, and tell you to come back tomorrow morning, but not too early.

Then on SUNDAY, I’d tell you that I’m sorry, but I had a ton of laundry and housecleaning to do prior to…the in-laws stopping by to break up their drive back down to Isla Retirementa, Florida from their two-week siege visit to The Brother in New Jersey. Wobbly-legged from arthritis, with weak hearts (and weak brains, but that’s another story), bad eyesight and poor hearing, they still insist on driving from FL to NJ and back every year. And they will NOT be put in a hotel, even at our seriously-incredibly-glad-to-do-it-expense, but would prefer to spend the stopover night here in our cat-hair-allergy-triggering, wooden-staircase-oh-Christ-there-goes-my-back-again upstairs bedroom.

And no, we don’t make them stay in THE upstairs bedroom, we only HAVE upstairs bedrooms. They know this. They’ve always known this. They can barely WALK! Why…someone, for the love of all that is sensible, someone PLEASE tell me WHY they insist on staying here? {deep breaths, in with the calm, out with the vitriol, in with the peace, out with the screaming fantods – it’s over now, you survived} ok. better now.

And along with the in-laws’ arrival’s prep work, there were also the regular weekend chores, compounded by the ‘we only do this the first weekend of each month’ chores, like changing the mattress pads, and the pillow covers (not to be confused with the pillowCASES, which are the ones you see, or the pillowSLIPS which go between the cover and the case.) And on a side note, are we the only people who sleep with three layers between our faces and the ticking? Mr Tater thinks we are.

Once I got all THAT out of my system, I’d tell you about how glad I am that this holiday season is over. Two weeks in a row of never knowing exactly what day it is has me all discombobulated. Back to normal now, and speaking of normal… it seems to be a bit chilly out there this morning. FINALLY, the weather is getting close to what it’s “supposed” to be in January.

I’d tell you that I’ve been reading a lot of bloggers’ resolutions, and decisions, and goals – I’m sticking with my plan of New Month’s Whatevers…for January, it’s get out there and WALK every day and the ONLY thing that is allowed to stop me is seriously inclement weather. Not laziness, not busy-ness, just bucketing down rain, or gale-force winds, or zombie apocalypse-type stuff. Well, and having a lot of post-in-laws clean up and the taking-down-of-even-our-tiny-effort-at-decorating work. That can interfere, too.

I exceeded my 2015 Goodreads Reading Challenge of 100 by an additional 8! Go eyes! This year I’ve set it for 104, a ice even 2 per week, but I’m making a vow, and to myself only, because I think I might break this one) to read at least one non-fiction work per month. Not a big fan of non-fiction, and I couldn’t tell you why. I’m breaking into it easy with Felicia Day’s memoir, You’re Never Weird On The Internet (mostly). It’s a fun read, she tells a great story.

I’d WANT to tell you about how incredibly weird I find most of humanity to be, and as evidence I’d tell you about Cousin Heloise’s breakfast vampire and Cousin Theodora’s chicken-soup-and-cake cancer. But I’ll save those for another whine-fest coffee get-together.

Don’t mind that scraping noise, those damned felt things don’t stick properly on the bottom of the chair legs. I have to keep adjusting them every couple of days. I hate to say it but I almost miss the linoleum. The ‘wood’ (laminate) looks good, and it feels nice to walk on, but the felt things stayed put before. Sigh.

The new vacuum? Yep, it finally did come out of the box, got used once, got cleaned up and put back in the box and back to the store it went. Mr Tater, who is in charge of vacuuming, hates this modern baglessness. He does NOT want to see the dirt swirling around, and he does NOT want to reach in and pull the static-electricity-captured dust/hair balls out. The only reason we were looking for a new one was because we can no longer find the bags anywhere except online, and Mr Tater is somehow opposed to online shopping. I think he thinks it makes him weak. Boys are so silly. So, bags are currently winging their way to us from some Amazon warehouse and the Adventure of the Bagless Vacuum is at an end. For now.

The mushroom stroganoff from last week was NOT good. Don’t know what I was thinking – apparently we do NOT like smoked paprika. Ick. We wasted a whole bunch of very nice mushrooms.

The big news at work is that I’m up for promotion. Don’t get too excited, I won’t know anything til after the first of the year, maybe not til as late as March. It’s not really going to change my day-to-day work all that much, but what it is going to do is save me being a middleman a lot of the time. The developers say “age” and I (Senior Data Modeler) say “no no, age changes. Use birthday and do the math!” They argue that math is hard. I argue that MATH IS WHAT COMPUTERS WERE MADE TO DO. They continue to argue. I go get my Lead Data Modeler who just says “birthdate” and they shut up. Now that I am going to be a Lead, they might listen to me first time around. We are a very hierarchy-driven environment – a title carries way more weight than experience and common sense do. So a great savings in time, plus it’ll be a nice $$ boost. 🙂

I’m keeping up my New Month’s Resolution of walking 30 minutes a day, every day, in December. I’m not losing any weight, and I’m not sleeping any better, so I’m not sure WHY I’m walking 30 minutes a day, every day… but I said I would, so I will.

I finished 100 books for my Goodreads challenge, but it feels a little like cheating because 6 of them were the first 6 of Lemony Snicket’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events. They’re so small and so quick, they really shouldn’t count as a whole book. So I’m going to count each of those as only 1/2 a book and not consider the Challenge really complete til I hit 103.

Busy week at work, but productive…3 big projects put to bed, only one left, plus dribs and drabs on the others as the developers realize what they forgot or left out.

The newest member of our team seems to be fitting in nicely, although I’m not looking forward to the next phase of her training. Because I’m going to be doing it.

Yeah, yeah, I know…it makes sense to let everyone teach her the things that they do best, so she LEARNS the best ways to do everything. And I am, if I do say so myself, good at my job, even if I’m not 100% happy with it.

I ran across a survey this week that asked questions about your job, the purpose being to determine how motivated you are to do your job. It boiled down to ‘are you doing your job because you like it? Or because you have to?’ I came out heavily on the Have To end of the spectrum. But no worries, only 6 years, 5 months, and 3 days til I can retire.

Looks like Ned has a minor flea infestation… in November! All these years we’ve lived in the South, and I still haven’t actually gotten over the fact that it doesn’t get cold here. Not Maine cold, that’s for sure. Fall is tough for me…we finally start opening our windows after keeping them closed against the ridiculous heat, and it makes me think it’s spring, and we’re finally opening them after keeping them closed against the ridiculous cold. But I digress… So now we have to find some time in his busy schedule when he’s calm, and lying flat on his stomach so we can squeeze the poisonous gunk in between his shoulder blades.

I gained 5 pounds this week, stupid pie, stupid stuffing, stupid lack of will-power… But now I have a whole month of being sensible til the Christmas Feast of Stupidity. And last night’s pizza didn’t help. We went back to the place that creepily called us back. We’re going to forgive that because WE HAVE FOUND OUR PIZZA! Yummmmmy. Thin crust, but not hard like a cracker, dripping with melty stringy cheese, but not so MUCH cheese that you feel greasy just eating it…perfect.

And I’ve decided that New Year’s Resolutions are just too oppressive. Too much pressure to think of the right one/s, too long-term. So starting on Tuesday, it’s New Month’s Resolution! For December it’s Walk 30 Minutes A Day. Every day, no excuses, no exceptions.